Deepening its existing partner relationship with Dell as a new competitive dynamic and pricing model unfolds, Citrix has announced the availability of a Dell-specific embedded version of XenServer for Dell PowerEdge servers.

Last month researchers at online security company Finjan uncovered a 1.4 gigabyte cache of stolen data from North America, Europe, the Middle East and India on a Malaysian server that provided command and control functions for malware attacks in addition to being a drop site for data harvested from compromised computers.

Just two days after walking away from its $49.6 billion bid for Yahoo, the Times Online U.K. is reporting that Microsoft is meeting with Time Warner executives regarding a possible bid for America Online -- the very company Yahoo turned to in a possible attempt to stave off the takeover bid from Redmond.

According to market watcher Infonetics Research, both Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are tops, overall, in the UC space. In fact, buyers say that Cisco and Microsoft are their preferred Unified Messaging and Communicator suppliers.

Whoever becomes our next president will inherit a cyber infrastructure under almost constant attack and at greater risk than eight years ago, and a handful of experts and legislators have come together to ensure that cybersecurity has a high priority in his or her administration.

According to a recent study from security and anti-virus specialist Sophos, servers in the U.S. and China host the lion's share of malware-infected Web sites. Meanwhile, Web attacks surged to an all-time high in the first quarter of this year, according to Sophos -- with no sign of dropping off any time soon.

Last week, Microsoft's .NET Framework program manager Krzysztof Cwalina announced that his team is working on a new framework for .NET -- Managed Extensibility Framework -- designed to improve compatibility with third-party extensions.

Looking to broaden the reach of high performance .NET applications across multiple clustered tiers and platforms, Microsoft this week will release a sample application, tutorials and benchmarks to help simplify the development and deployment of service-oriented architecture (SOA) composite apps.

The PCI Security Standards Council this week announced plans to issue new guidelines that it hopes will give transaction application developers and security specialists a clear direction to the path of least resistance when it comes to assessing risks surrounding customer and vendor data -- most notably, credit card and payment information.

Google's over-the-Internet software for editing, uploading and sharing office documents, known as Google Docs, can now be used offline, Google software engineer, Philip Tucker said on a blog yesterday.

Federal agencies' adoption of online applications from Internet powerhouse Google Enterprise could usher in an era of rising productivity and improved security, said David Girourard, the company's vice president and general manager.